Free Freddy

The fantastical tale of James and April Kauffman and the terrible Pagans gang might mark a new low in American journalism. Coverage of this case is a puppet dancing on a drum. Somewhere, Bat Masterson and H.L. Mencken are cleaning their guns.

The official version of the Kauffmans and the Pagans doesn’t yet have unicorns and leprechauns but it does feature a gullible drama queen named Nancy Grace, an investigator with no chin named James Scoppa and a county prosecutor named Damon G. Tyner who apparently found this case under a bridge or at the end of a rainbow. It also has all the drugs in the world except they are invisible drugs and no one can see them or the piles of money that comes with them. And there is lots of sex and lots of no sex and of course there is a perfect villain, a sixty-something guy with glam rock hair who used to ride with the Pagans.

His name is Ferdinand “Freddy” Augello. He’s the fall guy for the scores of fatal OxyContin overdoses a greedy doctor named James Kauffman built his “financial empire” on.

April

Kauffman, who hung himself, was a suspect in the murder of his wife April on May 10, 2012. in Linwood, New Jersey. According to Kauffman, his wife was still alive when he left to go to work that morning at 5:30. According to a legally obtained, sworn statement, two mopes named Joseph and Francis Mulholland took care of April Kauffman between five and five-thirty on May 10. But according to a report by a highly regarded forensic pathologist named Michael Baden, April Kauffman died, with “a reasonable degree of medical certainty,” at about 2:10 a.m.

There is, as yet. Little doubt that the woman was murdered. She was shot twice.

James Kauffman was the former April Sagransky’s third husband. They were married for eleven years. She died in their 7,000 square foot house. According to prosecutors, after they were married for ten years April discovered who Jim really was. Jim was not a war hero. He was operating a drug racket. It took her a decade to discover this. Then she was shocked. Six years after her death she is generally regarded as a “veteran’s advocate” and an analogue of one of the Biblical Marys.

The Boardwalk Journal: The Official Lifestyle Magazine of the Jersey Shore described April staring “seductively from her profile photo, looking much younger than her 47 years; the last album she posted features shots of a red Corvette and other sports cars. In other pictures, politicians and nonprofit executives flank her at benefits and award banquets.” The magazine notes that all her photos “feature her shining hair and wide, white smile.” Her former radio co-host “referred to her as the ‘Blonde Bombshell of the Airwaves.’”

The longer she was married to James Kauffman the more innocent she became. “We have reason to believe they were sleeping separately and hadn’t been intimate for a long period of time,” Scoppa assured a “journalist” on the ABC television show 20/20 on June 22.

The April Kauffman Veterans Advocate Award will be presented this Saturday.

Big Eyed Waifs

April Kauffman’s daughter, Kimberly Pack told 20/20 that she always knew her mother’s third husband did it. When she arrived at the Linwood home to discover her mother had been murdered she told the television show, she pointed at James Kauffman and told the police “Well, you can go right over there, because that’s the person that killed my mom.”

Six months earlier, she told Rick Rojas of the New York Times, that when James Kauffman was charged with her mother’s death, she “thought at first, my God, how did I not know who this man was? This man was around my children. It’s overwhelming — it’s overwhelming — and at the end of the day, it just makes you sad. I think I’m still trying to wrap my brain around why I am here right now.”

The origins of the prosecution that is now primarily aimed at Freddy Augello and that screams “Pagans Biker Gang” in virtually every headline are obscure. “It is unclear how the operation began,” is how Rojas put it in the Times. But suddenly, out of the blue after five years, the case narrative was there and it has always been too formulaic to be true. This has never been a story by James M. Cain. The government might be on to something if it was. This has always been an Aaron Spelling soap opera.

The headlines are there every day.

Once upon a time, when the movies were black and white and news was black and white, reporters were famous for their world weary cynicism. This Kauffman versus Pagans story is being covered by a gallery of big-eyed waifs. “So sad. So sad. Bad bikers. Bad. So sad. April beautiful. Tragic. Bad bikers. Good police.”

So Freddy Augello stays in jail, day after day.

Suicide Note

This week the headlines are about James Kauffman’s suicide note. It is 1,600 words long. What would you expect the suicide note of a narcissistic psychopath to say?

This week a judge named Bernard DeLury ruled that Kauffman’s self-serving screed was a “deathbed statement” and Augello’s lawyer could see it. Sometime. Real soon now.

“The letter purports to describe how the author became involved with the distribution of prescription narcotics and how that involvement gave rise to threats against him and his family that culminated in the death of April Kauffman,” the judge said.

The suicide note is still technically secret in this ridiculous case except to 20/20. “A copy was obtained exclusively by 20/20” and broadcast on national television three weeks ago. In it, according to ABC, “Kauffman adamantly denies that he had anything to do with his wife’s death.” Who do you think leaked this note to ABC? Do you think Freddy Augello leaked it? Why do you think it was leaked?

Why even bother to have a trial?

“I cannot live like this. I, no matter what anybody says, did not do anything to my wife,” Kauffman argues. Possibly he is arguing with Saint Peter.

According to ABC, “it was April Kauffman who had introduced him to the Pagans.”

“April came to me and said would I like to go to a motorcycle rally … to meet some of her friends… I was slightly shocked to say the least that they had the colors of Pagans,” the dead, drug-dealing doctor confesses.

This is a devolving case. The culprit isn’t Freddy Augello and the mystery isn’t who killed April Kauffman. The mystery is where this case came from and what it is covering up.

It is pretty easy to figure out who is controlling the press narrative and why.

8 Responses to “Free Freddy”

I’m the writer got a front page cover
Hot gossip ’bout who’s with their latest lover
I write all chapters by the second scene
I call the shots, don’t need a Fleet Street team
I am a writer and I’m the news
You cross me you know, you’re gonna lose
I’ll do the story if you’re dead or alive
If seconds out or if you’re gonna take a dive
Slip out the news or a piece of scandal
Don’t toe the line, ’cause nothing’s too hot to handle
I am a writer and I’m the news
If you cross me you know, you’re gonna lose
Yeah, you’re gonna lose
I am a writer and I am the news
If you cross me you know, you’re gonna lose
And where you are it’s because of me
‘Cause overnight you know it don’t come free
I’ll put you up there or I’ll bring you down
‘Cause nothing moves without me in this town
I am a writer and I am the news
You cross me you know, you’re gonna lose
Boy, you’re gonna lose
I said, you’re gonna lose
I write the news I am the news
Got to, got to got to lose
Oh yeah, you’re gonna lose
So don’t step on my blue suede shoes
You’re gonna lose

If you handed this case to a civil rights lawyer and redacted the names and the club, they’d all fight over it. They’d probably spend ten years in litigation with each other after all is said and done, but hey, not my problem.

This is so not funny at all! The entire judicial system in South Jersey is corrupt and it is a game. Who you know and who you blow type of thing and money talks! I spent the last thirty years working in it and know way too much about the players! Way too much! People do not want me to talk because they are afraid of what I will tell. Good – keep wondering!!!

The Miami Herald just released a story about the police in Biscayne Park pinning crimes on “blacks” so the Chief of Police could have a perfect record of crime solving! 1/3rd of the officers were told that blacks walking thru town would be charged with {unsolved} burglary’s if they had any previous record. Nothing like dogged police work to to keep the city safe!